The photo below by Brenton Cleeland launched a lawsuit that could have some interesting ramifications for online photo sharing sites like Flickr-if it gets to court.



That's not likely, though, according to two intellectual property attorneys that I spoke to yesterday.

"As everyone knows, a lot of cases settle before they go to court," Atty. Denise Mroz, of Woodcock Washburn in Philadelphia, tells me. "This seems like one of those cases, probably, that we're not going to have a decision on. I don't see how Virgin wouldn't try to settle the case with the plaintiff."

Mitchell J. Weinstein, head of the IP practice at Levenfeld Pearlstein in Chicago, agreed. "Virgin could be made to look very, very bad," he says. "And they don't need that."

"They often say that any publicity is good publicity," he adds. "Not when it comes to something like this."